dust to dust
by fall from stars
Summary: ONESHOT—Let’s meet again in the next life. [Axel & Roxas] [AU]


**A/N: **No, seriously, this is how it went down. Someone threw around the idea of Axel running a crematorium and my mind went haywire. Please read and review. Especially dedicated to Jo and Jasper, who definitely don't like where this is headed, but who I still love to pieces anyway.

**dust to dust**

After a while it gets so monotone. Bodies are carted in, cold from the mortician and the embalmer and the who-the-fuck-ever needs to see them before they come to see Axel. He's the end of the line, he's the last step before infinity because he's the last person that sees you before you're ash and whispers on the wind and after that, baby, you're gone. You don't have a tombstone to mark your place in the world; you don't have a memorial fund set up, most times.

It's so very monotone until one day a body comes in with pale skin and cold dead eyes and faded blond hair and when he unzips the bag it almost gives him a fucking heart attack. Because inside he sees a boy, maybe fifteen at most, and it's all of a sudden a flood of memories—_bad side, they'll destroy you_—and he doesn't know what's going on anymore—_no one will miss me_—and he's wondering vaguely if something got slipped into his tea at lunch because now all he can hear is _that's not true, that's not true, I would, I would miss you, I would, I would. I would and I wanted to see you again because you made me feel like I had_—

"Shit," Axel hisses, stumbling away from the small body, because if it comes alive he wants the fuck out of its way. And while that sounds crazy it's sounding likelier and likelier by the minute. In his stumbling, he bumps up against his partner-in-crime, partner-in-business and sometimes partner-in-morbidity, Kefka.

"Shit what?" Kefka demands, eyes sharp on Axel's panicky face.

"I remember that kid," Axel says, pointing a shaky finger at patient number three thousand and who really cares. "I dunno why, but I remember him. It freaked the hell outta me, that's all."

"Remember him or not, we've got a job to do," Kefka says dismissively. "Don't tell me it's got you spooked that bad, Axel. Thought you liked the dead."

"Thought I did too," Axel mutters, more to himself than to Kefka, who isn't listening anyway and who's probably started on one of the next three thousand patients.

Wheeling a cart with your eyes on the ground is a lot easier than it looks, as Axel realizes when he's off carting the dead dead boy to the oven. He strips the kid of anything extra; people don't pay for ashes of the dead's possessions. They only pay for the ashes of the dearly departed, and hell, if that's what they want, that's what they get.

"Guess this is kinda sad," he tells the kid's unresponsive face, and before he knows it he's on the verge of babbling. "Wonder what you died of. I know you can't hear me. Pretty stupid, me talking to you, huh? Guess I'll tell you something else. I don't really want to burn you."

He pinches the flood of thoughts shut. He feels like he needs to check something. He pushes one of the eyelids open. A glassy eye clear as summer rain stares out at him, never sees him. Blue, blissful bright blue, _like the sky_, Axel thinks, though he doesn't know why.

With that done, Axel doesn't know what else to do or to say; he just wants this done and over with before another one of those trippy memory floods comes racing back.

"Nothing personal, kid," he promises as he pushes the tray, and closes the heavy door. With that he sends the body of an almost-total stranger into a personal version of hell, into hot coals and metal air and smoke thick and choking.

"Sorry," he says halfheartedly, because he's not sure that he has the emotion for a genuine apology.

He starts to walk away when he remembers something else, something he feels that he needs to say.

"Let's meet again in the next life."

And with that, he falls back into the monotone while the kid just burns and burns like a star going out, like the best thing Axel never had, and Axel just walks away with sulfur breath and eyes dry from 300-degree heat.

---


End file.
